Nadezda Kuzhuget

I attribute my success to my parents, especially my mom. From the very beginning, from my school years and childhood, she put some seed of confidence in me. She always told me, 'You can. You can. Don't listen to anybody who says something different. You can do that. If you want, you can do that.' She always was telling me that - planting a seed of confidence that everything is possible, that I don't have to be scared or have fear. Of course, you will have fear when something is out of your comfort zone, but you have to overcome it and think about your goal, why do you need that, why you have to go out of your comfort zone. Overcoming that means you are growing. You cannot grow in the comfort zone. It's always juggling, going somewhere, climbing, scaring but doing, and being confident that you can do that. If not you, who? Nobody will do it for you.

When I was thinking about whether to become a judge in Russia or move to the United States, some of my colleagues told me something that really stuck with me. They said you have to hear your heart, your inner voice, your intuition, which tells you what is the right decision for you. They told me that the worst regret you can have is that you didn't do something. This is the worst regret that you can have - not doing something you wanted to do.

Believe in yourself, even when nobody believes in you.

The biggest challenge I face is that even though I'm an experienced lawyer from another country, they don't consider you as having experience in the United States. They treat you as a new graduate with small salary and starting from small positions. I don't hesitate to take those positions and start from there because you learn and you show yourself, and you can move faster because they see that you are reliable and do your work with quality. But the hardest part is to get there, to find somebody who will believe that you can do that with your international law degree. Another major challenge is that without a bar license yet, when I apply for paralegal positions to get experience, nobody wants me because they see on my resume that I will be a licensed attorney soon. They don't need those kind of paralegals - they're looking for people who don't have any hope, who will work for them forever. They're looking for people who don't have degrees more than paralegal studies, people without a bright future or perspective. My husband says I'm overqualified. Some people suggest I don't mention my degrees like bachelor or LLM, but how can I lie? When you pass the bar exam, you have to bring recommendation letters from all your workplaces, and if they find out I hid my qualifications, what will they think? It's not good for my character. I'm open to work for at least 2 years in one place - I'm not a person who changes jobs frequently - but people don't trust that. They think I will fly away right away. So it's very difficult to get experience, to start to have experience. Everyone wants a completed degree and passed bar exam, or if you don't have a bar exam and want to be a paralegal, they don't want to see that you have the ability to sit for bar exam in the near future.

I believe honesty is the most important value. I don't like when people are playing games, you know, double-faced people. When I feel that people are trying to play games like that, not being honest, I feel that if you lie, if you hide or lie even in small pieces, what should it be in the bigger area? Trust and honesty are important for me to establish. Even though sometimes in the workplace you have to pretend that you are this and that, sometimes sharing that you need help is more important than being open instead of hiding and doing mistakes by yourself without asking for help. It's about having the courage to reveal that you need help, maybe. Some people pretend that they know everything, that they're top employees or whatever, but then the quality is not good. If they had asked for advice or something, it would be better.